


Courage and Hope

by a_t_rain



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Gen, Jackson's Whole, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-23 23:32:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9687332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_t_rain/pseuds/a_t_rain
Summary: Post-CVA, Topaz and Amiri have a conversation.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Because I found that I wanted to write another Topaz story. Part of a loosely linked series of short one-shots about the Arquas; the others, in rough chronological order, are [Cargo](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6047382) (young Shiv/Udine), [Loyalty](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4314537) (Rish), [Ordinary](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6498709) (Topaz), and [Magnetism and Gravitation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5617924) (Amiri). Topaz also has a major supporting role in my longer, By-centric fic, [On a Cold Planet](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6112777/chapters/14010976).

They were letting Topaz have solid food for the first time since her surgery, and she was thoroughly enjoying the breakfast the nurses had brought: a small glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, a larger mug of coffee, strong and rich and milky; crusty bread with a sort of tomato-and-olive-oil paste that the Escobarans used instead of jam, and a couple of thin slices of ham. It was lovely ham, dark and silk-smooth with a ribbon of creamy fat at the edges. She was trying to remember as much about the food as she could, so she could tell the others about it later. Rish, with her new culinary interests, would want to know.

The door of her private room at the clinic swung open, and Topaz braced herself for more medical poking and prodding, but it was only her brother Amiri: an unexpected pleasure.

He sat down on the edge of her hospital bed. “How’re you doing?”

“I can’t tell,” said Topaz, trying not to let her disappointment show. “I can’t move my legs at all.”

He flicked his thumb against her leg. “Feel that?”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to be fine, then. It’s just that the muscles need to be worked. You’ll have your first appointment with the physical therapist in the afternoon. Brought you something.” He handed her a wedge of potato omelet, wrapped in a napkin. “They don’t serve lunch until two or three in the afternoon, so I snagged you this to tide you over. Breakfast for celiacs and vegetarians.”

“Vegetarians?”

“Most of the meat here isn’t vat-grown. I should have warned you about that.”

“It’s all right.” Topaz nibbled curiously at a scrap of ham, wondering whether it made any difference to the flavor. She had never had any ham quite like this before, so it was hard to tell. It seemed firmer and chewier than the vat-prosciutto she was used to, but maybe that was because it was more thickly cut.

“The pigs have a nice life,” said Amiri, with a sort of half-shrug of apology. “Running wild in the forest, getting fat on acorns. They don’t have more than one bad day in their lives.”

“At home,” Topaz said mischievously, “that’s what they say about clones. Well, maybe not the acorns part.”

Amiri winced, as he often did these days in response to Jacksonian irony. As if he thought she found the clone-trade any less appalling than he did! She wondered when her little brother had grown so _serious_. She remembered Amiri when he was very small, tagging after her incessantly: _Pazzy, pway wif me?_ The Baronne had fretted over his speech impediment, wondering how she could _ever_ have made such a mistake; Dada had smiled and said Amiri would grow out of it, and so he had.

“I don’t think you should go back,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I think you should stay here, on Escobar. You and Jet both.” (There had been a lot of argument over which of the other Jewels, if not all of them, should travel to Amiri’s clinic with her; they’d finally settled on Jet, who had been to Escobar before and said that he didn’t mind going again.)

“What about the others?”

“They can join you. There’ll always be a place for all of you here.” 

“Ruby would never leave the Baronne,” said Topaz, “and neither would Rish. You know that.”

“Well, as many of them who want to come here, then.”

“There are _six_ of us, Amiri. Always. And you haven’t asked me whether _I_ want to stay here.”

“You want to go back there? After they did _that_ to you?” He gestured at her as-yet-useless legs.

“If I don’t go back,” said Topaz, “what was all this _for?_ I mean, I could have a perfectly nice life in a float-chair on Escobar.”

Amiri seemed confused by this statement, and Topaz tried to explain, haltingly, why _I will dance again_ had to mean _I will dance on Jackson’s Whole again_. It was something that was easier to _feel_ than to articulate, and Amiri still seemed confused after she finished.

“It’s a rotten world,” said Amiri. “Corrupt to the core. You have to know that by now. Why would you want to go back?”

“It’ll _always_ be corrupt to the core,” said Topaz, “if only corrupt people stay.”

“Look –” Amiri drummed his fingers against the sheets, impatient – “I understand that Mama and Dada think – even though they’ve got their own fair share of corruption – that they can be a little better than the swamp around them. And maybe they’re even right, I don’t know. But even if they are, they don’t need you. You’re not a baron or a fighter or even a lawyer or doctor, you’re a dancer. I mean … you can do that anywhere,” he finished, rather awkwardly, as if he had belatedly realized he had more or less called dancers useless. (Of course, he had meant it; people _always_ thought art was useless. Well-intentioned people, like Amiri, thought it could wait until all the other problems in the galaxy had been fixed, and ill-intentioned ones, like the Prestenes, didn’t really care for it except as something to be _acquired_.)

“Maybe the people need something beautiful,” said Topaz.

“What people?”

“People at home. _Our_ people.”

“It isn’t my home anymore,” said Amiri, “and they’re definitely not my people. You know as well as I do that most of them backed the Prestenes happily enough, and I _don’t blame them_ , because it’s not as if our parents ever did anything for them. Best thing any of them can hope for is to get away, same as us.”

“You weren’t there,” said Topaz, “you don’t know.”

“I remember. Jackson’s Whole doesn’t change.”

“Everything changes,” said Topaz. Maybe Amiri didn’t know that, she thought, because he wasn’t a dancer. Dance was about change and motion, no moment the same as the next; even when the patterns seemed to repeat they were always subtly different, if only by happening at a different point in time. _Everything goes forward_ , Topaz thought, _never backward_.

* * *

_Don’t grieve, don’t fear, don’t look back. Just keep going forward._ She had repeated those words to herself until they almost lost their meaning, in those first awful days after the Prestene takeover and again, later, when she had been their prisoner with her legs amputated. (Oddly enough, that part had been less awful; she’d acquired a sense of _purpose_ by then.) _Don’t grieve, don’t fear, don’t look back._ But also, _don’t forget_ , and that had seemed to be the impossible part, because you couldn’t remember without also thinking about what had been, and what ought still to be, and how swiftly and inexplicably it had all gone wrong.

The Prestenes had put vid footage of _what had been_ on an endless loop: the Jewels’ public performances, images of everything that had once belonged to the Arquas, and the bit that always made her want to weep, the Baron and Baronne dancing together at a reception on Cordonah Station. Other than that, they had left her alone most of the time – there was, after all, no possibility that she could escape unaided – and so she had fallen without thinking into the habit of talking out loud to herself. _Don’t grieve, don’t fear, don’t look back._

And then one of the attendants who came to change her dressings had overheard her, and had whispered “Courage and hope,” and Topaz had repeated the words, and then _courage and hope_ had become a watchword of sorts, repeated among a surprising number of the people working for the Prestenes. She hadn’t trusted them at first, hadn’t been willing to believe there _could_ be people loyal to her parents left. The Prestenes had used fast-penta before re-hiring House Cordonah staff. Topaz, with her haut genes, had been able to fool them; surely none of the others could.

Later she had come to understand. Jacksonian grubbers, as a rule, were not loyal to Houses that had fallen; no one expected it, and as far as they were concerned, one Baron was as good – or as bad – as the next. It was _later_ , after the Prestenes had a chance to show what they were, that some of the people who had worked under both regimes had shed their indifference and decided to take risks, sometimes very big risks, to bring the Arquas back.

Topaz hadn’t been able to help much – except by being a sort of living symbol of _what had been_ , and, later, by killing two of the Prestenes’ guards as Rish’s Barrayaran lover helped her make her escape. But she had remembered every face and every name of everyone who had given her comfort, and she had made sure the Baronne knew about them.

* * *

“I’m going back,” said Topaz. “I promised some people.”

“Nobody keeps promises there,” said Amiri. “Nobody even expects it.”

“ _I_ do. And maybe if we start doing it, people _will_ start expecting it.”

“Suit yourself,” said Amiri, giving it up.

“I am.”

“I know. But I still don’t understand what you think you’re going to _do_ when you get there.”

Topaz looked up at him, chin lifted. “I am going to dance.”


End file.
